‘Change’ is theme at annual All Peoples Celebration, one of several tributes on day honoring civil rights icon

Longtime activist Vernon Sukumu steps to the podium after receiving the Ashley Walker Social Justice Award at the All Peoples Celebration in Barrio Logan. His achievements include founding the S.D. Black Federation. John Gastaldo • U-T

Longtime activist Vernon Sukumu steps to the podium after receiving the Ashley Walker Social Justice Award at the All Peoples Celebration in Barrio Logan. His achievements include founding the S.D. Black Federation. John Gastaldo • U-T

Cynthia McGee-Burton performs with the hearing-impaired Gospel Signing Choir of San Diego at the 25th annual All Peoples Celebration in Barrio Logan, marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day. More than 600 attended the celebration Monday. John Gastaldo • U-T

Cynthia McGee-Burton performs with the hearing-impaired Gospel Signing Choir of San Diego at the 25th annual All Peoples Celebration in Barrio Logan, marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day. More than 600 attended the celebration Monday. John Gastaldo • U-T

Half a century ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the Calvary Baptist Church in Barrio Logan.

On Monday, more than 600 people gathered in a renovated warehouse near the church to celebrate his day.

Organizers of the 25th annual All Peoples Celebration, which was previously held at hotels, said they moved the event to Barrio Logan so it would be in the same neighborhood the civil-rights leader once visited. It was a morning of poetry, song and speeches as attendees reflected on the theme of “The Art of Change.”

“Today is a day of calibration and connection,” said Andrea Guerrero, executive director of the host organization, Alliance San Diego. “We’re going to calibrate how far we’ve come and how far we have yet to go, and hopefully we’ll connect. We’ll connect with the past, the present and the future. We’ll connect with one another.”

The All Peoples Celebration was one of numerous events around San Diego County on Monday honoring King.

More than 500 people cleared brush and performed other community service at an interfaith gathering in National City. At the San Diego Food Bank, about 100 volunteers from Kaiser Permanente packed food for seniors. In Oceanside, the North San Diego chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People hosted its annual prayer breakfast and birthday celebration for King. And at the Joe and Vi Jacobs Center in Fairmont Village, people converged for the 18th annual Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Breakfast.

Ashley Walker, chairwoman of the All Peoples Celebration Host Committee, shared a story from her youth near Montgomery, Ala., during the era of segregation. The former head of the city Human Relations Commission, whose name is on the commission’s annual award for social justice, talked about being 6 years old when she tried to board a school bus on the first day of classes with her best friend, who was a white boy. The bus was filled with white children who saw Walker and her friend holding hands. Walker got kicked off the bus, but her friend did not and came home from school all beaten up.

“One of the things I’ve tried to do is live my life in a way that people understand that if you want change, you have to be the change,” said Walker, 64. “We are the generation that started putting the nails and setting the structure. Things are different now and things are changing now. And we’re in the transition of turning the organizations, the structures, over to younger people who want to do it differently.”

One of those from the younger generation is Victoria Crosdale, 15, of El Cajon. She took the stage with the Gospel Signing Choir at the same event.

“It means a lot to be able to perform representing someone that has changed the lives of many,” said the Mount Miguel High School sophomore. “It’s just overwhelming.”

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, who delivered the keynote speech, recalled being 13 and meeting King. Filner was arrested at 18 as a freedom rider, trying to instill desegregation in the South. He spent two months in a Mississippi jail before the Supreme Court overturned his arrest.

“What that whole experience taught me and what, as I call him Martin, taught me, was that when you get involved in the political life of your nation, you can change history,” Filner told reporters before his speech. “We changed American history. We didn’t make it perfect, but we changed history, and for someone who was 18 to understand that motivated me for the rest of my life.”